Stock futures signal drop; banks, airlines eyed

Stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 1 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.9 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 1.1 percent.

* Global airlines are likely to lose $9 billion this year, the International Air Transport Association said on Monday, nearly double its estimate of just three months ago, as rising fuel prices and weak demand create an unprecedented crisis for the industry.

* The Obama administration is expected to announce this week that a higher-than-expected number of large financial institutions will be allowed to repay their government bailout funds, the Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition. The newspaper report said the size of the repayments may be twice the initial estimate of $25 billion.

* Barclays Plc is in talks to sell Barclays Global Investors (BGI), the British bank said on Monday, with U.S. fund manager BlackRock the frontrunner to land the asset manager, according to people familiar with the matter.

BlackRock and Bank of New York Mellon are both in talks to buy BGI in a deal that could be worth about $12 billion and might come early this week, the sources, who asked not to be named as the talks are confidential, said.

* Boston mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments and New York private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. have struck a deal to sell shares of KKR initial public offerings to retail customers, hoping for a comeback in the frozen market. KKR has investments in 50 companies with a combined $200 billion of revenue. But KKR hasn't had an IPO since it took Sealy Mattress Co public in 2006.

* Indiana pension funds and consumer groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sunday to stop the sale of bankrupt automaker Chrysler LLC to a group led by Italian carmaker Fiat SpA while they challenge the deal.

* European stocks were down 1.5 percent in morning trade, as lower commodity prices prompted investors to book recent lofty profits on mining and banking stocks such as BHP Billiton , Anglo American , Barclays and Deutsche Bank .

* U.S. stocks ended mixed on Friday, with the major indexes split as investors paused to consider conflicting signals in monthly U.S. jobs data. Investors also sold some recent winners to book gains from the spring rally, which has lifted the S&P 500 up almost 40 percent from its 12-year closing low on March 9.